A California woman has filed a federal lawsuit against United Wholesale Mortgage LLC, alleging the lender obtained her consumer credit report without authorization during an early-stage refinance inquiry, according to the complaint.
Plaintiff Tiana Perez filed the complaint March 20 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The suit alleges violations of the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act and the California Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies Act, according to the filing.
According to the complaint, Perez began exploring refinance options in December 2025 and sent a mortgage statement to a UWM loan officer while asking about a possible no-closing-cost structure or lender credit. The complaint claims that several days later, the loan officer indicated by text that her credit may have been pulled accidentally as the file was being assembled.
The lawsuit alleges Perez then asked whether the inquiry was a hard credit pull and was told that it was. According to the complaint, she later confirmed hard inquiries from Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.
The complaint further claims that Perez contacted both UWM and CoreLogic Credco to dispute the inquiry and seek its removal. According to the filing, Credco later informed Perez that UWM had represented the credit report was accessed based on her verbal authorization in connection with a mortgage transaction.
Perez alleges that representation was false and maintains she never gave verbal or written authorization for a hard credit pull. According to the complaint, she did not submit a formal credit application with UWM and was only making an initial inquiry about refinance options when the alleged inquiry occurred.
The suit claims the alleged credit pull lacked a permissible purpose under federal and California law.
Perez further alleges she suffered an invasion of privacy, harm to her credit and creditworthiness, a drop in her credit score, and emotional distress, including frustration, worry, anger, and lost time, according to the complaint.
The complaint seeks actual damages, statutory damages, punitive damages, attorney’s fees, and costs. It also asks the court to order deletion of the allegedly inaccurate information from Perez’s credit reports and to require notice of corrected information to parties that may have received it.
A jury trial has been demanded, according to the filing.
“The allegations in this lawsuit are factually incorrect,” a spokesman for UWM responded. “We intend to defend against these claims and are confident they will be resolved in our favor.”
Bottom Line
The complaint is a cautionary tale for mortgage professionals: when credit is pulled before borrower authorization is clearly obtained and documented, what may be framed internally as a routine step can quickly become a legal liability.
